Secretary of Transportation unloaded on former President Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s transportation secretary, over an air traffic control system report.
Absolutely insane. More evidence that Biden’s administration spent more time and money on “social justice” crap than actual work.
Duffy said outside the White House:
This is not a new problem. We’ve known this problem has existed. There has been multiple GAO reports over the last four years saying you have real problems with air traffic control and you should do something with it before it actually fails.So think about this. The last administration spent $1.2 trillion, the largest infrastructure package ever known to man, they spent, Joe Biden signed right here at this White House, and how much was spent to rebuild air traffic control? $5 billion. And of the $5 billion that was spent or was given, only $1 billion was actually spent. So they have made no investments in the system that we now see having issues in Newark.On top of that, they were focused on things like racist roads. They literally spent time concerned about the word cockpit and changing cockpit to flight deck, it’s not funny. That’s actually what they spent time on, or airmen to aeronaut, and so now this administration has come in, and it was shortly after the DCA air crash that I started to look at veer traffic control system. And very quickly I saw one piece of the pie where there was issues and then scratched further. And there’s another piece of the pie. And as we looked at it, we see that the whole system needs to be redone. We need to build a brand new air traffic control system.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has been railing about a fiasco at Newark’s airport, which has caused delays and disruptions.
Schumer demanded an FAA investigation, describing the agency as “a mess.”
Schumer even admitted that air traffic controllers had warned the FAA for a long time about the problems.
Interesting. Duffy dropped some truth bombs on CNN yesterday about Schumer and the fact that DOGE hasn’t done anything critical to the department that would delay or cause problems to fix any major problem:
We’ve been bringing on and hiring more air traffic controllers, bringing more air traffic controllers into the school. DOGE has had no role in cutting our critical safety mission at DOT. We’ve expanded that, whether they’re pipeline inspectors or rail inspectors, airline inspectors or air traffic controllers.But what Chuck Schumer is talking about is DOGE which again, has no play. But if you want the idea to come in and look at what happened in TRACON when it moved from New York. They moved it last summer under Pete Buttigiege from New York to Philly. And when they do that investigation, they’ll find that Chuck Schumer was actually part of the problem where they were testing up new equipment to deploy in Philly.And because he kept playing political games, that equipment wasn’t tested. You’ll also find that before they moved the TRACON to Philly from New York for Newark that they actually should have built out the infrastructure around Philly so you don’t have to pull that information out of Newark. They didn’t do those things correctly and part of the problem was Chuck Schumer so I look forward to the IG investigation about what the real problems were that we’re experiencing right now, how it goes back to the games that Chuck Schumer was playing as he was a lead senator from New York.
TRACON stands for “terminal radar approach control.” I cannot believe I had to find this information on Reddit. Someone asked about the move to Philly, and an air traffic controller answered.
The TRACON on Long Island (N90) worked the EWR (Newark Liberty International Airport) airspace with 33 certified controllers. The FAA transferred the airspace to Philadelphia and sent only 24 certified controllers. The guy wrote:
So now there are only 24 certified controllers in the EWR area at PHL.Additional issues come from separation of EWR and LGA airspace that don’t have a significant affect on beautiful days. But they have a huge impact during storms.Where i [sic] might have squeezed some guys though a hole in weather that was in EWR airspace (or vice versa), now that hole is unusable because I don’t feel confident I can coordinate this complex operation via telephone. I used to just send a supervisor or controller over to the EWR area to talk in person about how to share airspace. Now I have to be conservative and hold first. Then once I feel like we are on the same page, I can run traffic.
This Reddit thread started eight months ago. Eight months ago. Another person wrote, “expect it to get much, much, much worse in 2026.”
Another person wrote:
A safety review was conducted prior to the airspace cutover from N90 to PHL. This review revealed numerous safety risks that would be introduced into the operation as a result of this move. The Agency chose to accept these safety risks and move the airspace anyways.The Agency has reduced the staffing of the EWR Area by ~30%. They have uprooted Air Traffic Controllers from their homes/lives and forced them to PHL. They are willingly accepting safety risks as a result of this move. All to “fix a staffing problem”. Check your napkin math from above.
Yes, Schumer. Let’s have an investigation. Let’s find out why Newark is having so many problems.
I’d love to find out more information about that safety review. I’d also love to find more about Schumer’s involvement.
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